Senior Load Performance Test Engineer

TechSur Solutions•Reston, VA

About The Position

TechSur Solutions is supporting a federal program delivering a modern, cloud-native application for a Department of Defense end-user community. The application replaces legacy paper-based workflows with a digitized, mobile-first platform deployed on Google Cloud Platform (GKE) within an IL4 authorization boundary. The technology stack includes Angular, Spring Boot (Java), PostgreSQL (Cloud SQL), and a GitLab-managed CI/CD pipeline. We are seeking a Senior Load & Performance Test Engineer to join our test automation team supporting a high-visibility DoD modernization program. This role carries primary technical ownership of all load and performance testing activities — including Green Doc / RSO approval stewardship — using Grafana k6 OSS. The candidate will also contribute to automated functional testing (Playwright) and unit testing, but the core responsibility — and the reason this position exists — is to design, develop, execute, and report on load and performance tests in a federal cloud environment.

Requirements

5+ years of performance engineering experience, with at least 3 hands-on with Grafana k6 (OSS) for load and performance testing, including script development in JavaScript/TypeScript.
Strong GCP experience — GKE, Cloud SQL, Secret Manager, Artifact Registry, workload identity, and VPC networking (EKS/AKS experience transferable but GCP strongly preferred).
Experience deploying containerized workloads on Kubernetes for test execution (ephemeral pods, Docker).
Proficiency with GitLab CI/CD for automated test execution and integration, including protected variables, environment guards, and pipeline-level governance.
Experience with Playwright or similar modern E2E testing frameworks (Cypress, Selenium).
Working knowledge of Grafana/Prometheus for metrics visualization and dashboard creation.
Demonstrated ability to root-cause performance issues across application, database, and infrastructure layers (not just report them).
Ability to work collaboratively with cloud engineers and developers to design load-testing infrastructure, resolve authentication challenges, and coordinate environment access.
Strong documentation skills — prior experience authoring Green Docs, RSO approval packages, or equivalent federal security-review artifacts.
Active Public Trust clearance (minimum); Secret or IL4-suitability clearance preferred. CAC eligibility strongly preferred.
U.S. Citizenship required.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Nix / Nix flakes for reproducible build environments.
Experience with the k6 Kubernetes operator (ephemeral-pod execution pattern).
Experience with DoD/federal DevSecOps environments (IL4/IL5 enclaves, Platform One, or equivalent).
Familiarity with Keycloak or similar identity providers for test user management.
Familiarity with Apigee API management and edge-latency analysis.
Knowledge of Spring Boot (Java) and Angular application architectures.
Prior experience with DoD or federal maintenance/logistics systems.
Familiarity with ATO processes and ability to support security documentation for tool selection.
Experience with JMeter, Gatling, or LoadRunner in addition to k6.
Cloud certifications (GCP preferred; AWS or Azure acceptable).

Responsibilities

k6 Script Development & Execution: Author, maintain, and execute load and performance test scripts in JavaScript/TypeScript using Grafana k6 OSS. All scripts must be version-controlled alongside application source code.
Test Scenario Design & Orchestration: Design and execute load profiles including baseline/steady-state, peak business load, stress ramp to SLA-breach identification, and soak/endurance testing (spike testing only if authorized under a future Green Doc amendment).
Transaction Mix Configuration: Define and manage parameterized transaction mixes across inquiry, create/update, reporting, and administrative operation classes — refining based on stakeholder input and production usage patterns.
Threshold & SLO Definition: Define SLIs/SLOs and collaborate with SRE and product stakeholders to set and evolve performance thresholds that govern automated run pass/fail.
Performance Diagnostics: Root-cause regressions across the stack — JVM/GC, PostgreSQL query plans, GKE autoscaler and pod-level resource behavior — not just report them.
Cloud Infrastructure & Deployment: Deploy k6 as a containerized workload (Nix-flake-built image) within GKE, or as a managed VM for manual verification. Work directly with partner cloud/infrastructure engineers on: VM provisioning, workload-identity/service-account configuration, and IAM role assignments; Artifact Registry management and k6 image provisioning; GCP Secret Manager integration for test user credentials; Pipeline-triggered execution via GitLab Runner.
Authentication Strategy: Manage identity-provider-based authentication for load-test service accounts, including session management, account-lockout mitigation, and explicit login/logout sequences. Coordinate with partner teams for test user provisioning.
CI/CD Integration & Execution Governance: Integrate k6 tests into the GitLab pipeline so load runs execute automatically on successful builds/deploys, with environment guards, protected variables, and safeguards against accidental execution against demo/.mil/prod.
Observability & Reporting: Stream k6 results to the enclave-internal Grafana / Prometheus stack (no external telemetry egress). Define metrics, compile load-testing reports, and present findings to program stakeholders.
Browser-Based Load Testing: Develop and execute browser-based load testing scripts using k6/browser against Angular frontend endpoints.
Data Integrity & Recovery: Collaborate with infrastructure engineers on Cloud SQL snapshot/restore strategies before and after load runs to ensure data integrity.
Service-Stub / Mock-Contract Design: Design and maintain service stubs / contract mocks (WireMock, Hoverfly, or in-process stubs) for upstream systems that are out-of-scope for load, ensuring a defined, auditable test boundary.
Documentation & Federal Deliverables: Author and maintain Green Docs, RSO approval packages, implementation plans, architecture documents, and tool-selection analyses aligned to federal/DoD documentation standards.
Playwright Automated Testing: Contribute to the existing Playwright-based automated UI testing framework. Write and maintain E2E test specs in TypeScript, including authentication flows, multi-form testing, and test artifact capture (screenshots, network traffic, accessibility snapshots).
Unit Testing Support: Support unit-test coverage improvement for backend (JUnit 5 / JaCoCo) and frontend (Jest). Contribute to CI/CD coverage-gate enforcement at established and incrementally increasing thresholds.
Code Quality: Support SonarQube integration for code quality analysis and coverage visibility.